Sebas Velasco – Sharing his experiences

Sebas Velasco is a Spanish artist that is based in San Sebastian, and was originally born in Burgos. When he was a kid he started drawing, and soon after he started to do graffiti with his friends. After his child years he went to Bilbao to do fine arts. He loved what he was doing and even won some prices for his works. This was an extra motivation for him to continue. “It is not important to win prices, but it is always nice!”.

Sebas describes his style as figurative, but he also says that it is changing all the time. “I learned to paint with spray cans, but at some point I was stuck with the technic”. “That was the moment when I started to paint with a brush, and it really opened my practice. A new wall of subjects. I realized I could bring more stuff together in the wall.”

According to Sebas there is no common theme in his works, but still there are certain aspects that appear more often. “Normally I don’t have specific messages, because I am interested in a lot of things. Most of all I am interested in the story of individual people. Each work contains its own story of a different person. I am often interested in people that migrate from one place to another. Then I ask myself: why do they move? Is it because of war? Or work? For example, in Croatia I painted a guy that was born in Bosnia, and then moved to Croatia to work. I painted this wall in a though neighborhood, on an old building with a lot of bullet holes from the Second World War. The same with my work here in Rotterdam. The work illustrates Chino, a guy that lives in Holland, but originally was born in China. Most of the time the experience is more important than painting the wall. The relationship with the people is more important. Painting the wall is a way of sharing my experiences when I travel.”

One of his inspirations has been Axel Void, but there are many Spanish artists that inspired him to improve or change his technics. “They were painting walls in a different way, and this was also an inspiration for me. We inspire each other.”

Nevertheless, Sebas doesn’t travel that much, and prefers to paint canvasses in his studio with his fellow artists. Living in Basque country, and most of his family being Basques, he is also busy with learning the Basque language.